Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Our local public high school

I can't speak to the OP's school, and I think ChaosMitten brings up good points. But for example where we are, the quality of the music program does have to do with the school and not just with the parents. Sure kids get private lessons, are made to practice, play in local youth symphonies, and there is a booster club. But the daily instruction beginning in middle school by excellent orchestra directors has a direct impact on the awards the orchestra receives, and the joy my daughter derives from participating.

I did have to have this conversation with my daughter when I saw her eyes light up at the thought of valedictorian. Students are taking extra on-line AP classes to bring their GPA up--and there are usually around 70-80 kids with perfect GPAs (4.something something) taking all AP classes + stellar ECs. I know that many parents put enormous pressure on their kids. The first violin at one of the concerts burst into tears afterwards because she had made a small, unnoticeable mistake during a solo and was afraid to face her parents.

My DS16 goes to one of those schools. Top number of National Merit for the area, made top 100 in one of those top rated schools lists again this year. Five kids made it to the national level of Math Olympiad.

There are good things to the school & bad. The stress is incredible for the kids who are in all the top honors classes. The school has insanely high expectations of the top kids. The grade curve is crazy. It's hard to get those top grades that will help you get into the top schools, unless you do little other than study. I know kids who got B's in honors/AP classes yet got 5's on all the AP tests. In order to make the school look good they limit who can take the AP classes.

On the other hand DS does has some great teachers. (But unfortunately not all.) Many of those teachers really teach the kids something useful. There is a good cohort of gifted kids at the school and DS has been able to find friends. The school has been surprisingly helpful about putting together a 504 for my son and seem to understand about 2E, and has been very sensitive to anxiety/depression issues. The school is extremely culturally diverse.

We could do worse but we could do better.

LOL to the list of "Gunn/Monta Vista/Cupertino High??" Is Paly no longer the top of that list? I find this amusing but remember Silicon Valley isn't the only place to find top schools with high expectations our of our teens.

I was not sure if Paly's orchestra is going to Carnegie Hall this summer - which is the only reason I left it out Since you asked, I am changing it to:
Gunn/Monta Vista/Cupertino High/Paly/Saratoga High I am sure that there are equally high performing schools all over the country and in CA (considering CA schools rate very low, the other states must have a better share of them).

MY DS16's school/district does not do valedictorian just for this reason. In fact they don't do class 'rank' either. What they do is will give colleges a percentage 'rank".. ie in the top 5%, 10%, 25%. All students who have a 'top' GPA are given awards. There are huge numbers who have GPA's above a 4.0 every year. This is one of the things I think my DS's school does right.

They have turned the valedictorian speech into a contest. There are two students speeches one for ANY student at the school & the other for any student in the top ~2%. (There is a GPA cutoff) Students have to submit a speech, top speeches are selected for a 'contest' that students can attend and vote on. The winners give the speeches at graduation. This eliminates the problem of the valedictorian who is introverted and doesn't want to give the speech. What I like about this is ANY student can win one of the spots.

Excellent points.

As another silicon forest-dweller , I'd also add that it is important to pay attention to local norms re: adolescent mental health indicators.

Many such places have very high teen suicide rates-- or high rates of mental health hospitalizations. That's the dark side that I referred to earlier.

This kind of environment is not a good one for:

anyone who isn't HG/HG+,
those who intend to gain admission to elite-elite institutions.

The latter has already been explained rather well-- but let me further explain the former. There is tremendous pressure placed on the kids in the top 5-10% in such settings. Tremendous pressure.

On the other hand, most of the parents who post/read here have children who really can (in general) perform up to those expectations without having to do anything particularly unhealthy to do so. Kids above MG also have the chance to find their tribe more readily when 15-25% of the local school population is genuinely at least garden-variety gifted.

On the other-other hand (this is why I need that third hand, huh?) that kind of high-anxiety environment may be particularly enriched in disordered eating and other maladaptive coping-- particularly for girls. That kind of anxiety/perfectionism can be "contagious." It also means that if your child has MG friends, s/he will astutely hide how easily s/he is meeting those standards so that their parents don't get wind of it and use it as leverage against their own kids. (I wish that I were kidding about that). The KIDS may be great... and the parents may be another story if they feel that your kid is not a "good influence" (er-- or more insidiously, a 'good foil' for his/her excellence). The competitiveness among parents there can be pretty toxic.


PG kids are still like unicorns-- only a fair number of the villagers are tying paper mache horns to their horses and definitely don't want the real deal to be TOO obvious. KWIM?

I disagree, since I don't like the idea of discarding information, which is what such "binning" does. If colleges think the 1st and 25th student in a class of 500 are equivalent, they can make their admissions decisions accordingly, but they should get the raw rank. I was 2nd in a class of almost 500. To say only that I was only in the top 25 would have hurt my admissions chances and I think misrepresented my level of accomplishment. (This last sentence does not sound modest, but I don't think my classmates would have said I was the 10th best or 25th best student in the class. I was voted most studious boy .)

The person ranked 51st out 500 won't like being consigned to the top 25% bin, having just missed the top 10% cutoff.

I agree, Bostonian.

Not the public school I'm talking about, with regard to Chaosmitts! Our Robotics Team is run at the high school and is a class. They raise alot of money from outside sources but our school district does provide some money.

I think I explained this wrong. In their councilor letter sent to the school they list GPA ranges with percentiles for the graduating class, and they get a GPA from the school for this student. Not a percentage range for this student. So a admissions officer can see if a student is in the approx. 11% percentile. Every year appox. 35+ students probably have a GPA within a very close range of each other. Within (0.05% of each other) Including many with approximately exactly the same GPA.

Otherwise these students do things to to try and up their GPA, like not taking art and/or music because it will lower their GPA. Students try and figure out ways to boost the system. Or taking required classes that don't give a +1 point at an onine school. They do this stuff anyway but the school is trying to take the stress away from having them quibble about that last 0.01 percent.

If you reduce the granularity in the data set by not disclosing class rank and allowing grade inflation so the top 15+% all have unweighted 4.0s, you aren't solving the problem of cutthroat competition--you're just diverting it into another area. The competition for the finite resources of scholarships, awards, and competitive college admissions does not magically disappear. The battle is now taking place in extracurriculars, which gives even more advantage to wealthier kids with more involved parents and can also disadvantage highly gifted kids who might be pointier when compared to the less gifted kids who are "well rounded" because they are varsity athletes or student body presidents.

I think the true beneficiaries of the unranked and grade inflated high schools are the teachers and administrators who have to field fewer angry calls and emails from angry grade grubbing students and parents.